The advent of cloud-based computing architectures has opened new possibilities for the rapid and scalable deployment of virtual Web stores, media outlets, social networking sites, and many other on-line sites or services. In general, a cloud-based architecture deploys a set of hosted resources such as processors, operating systems, software and other components that can be combined together to form virtual machines. A user or customer can request the instantiation of a virtual machine or set of machines from those resources from a central server or cloud management system to perform intended tasks, services, or applications. For example, a user may wish to set up and instantiate a virtual server from the cloud to create a storefront to market products or services on a temporary basis, for instance, to sell tickets to or merchandise for an upcoming sports or musical performance. The user can subscribe to the set of resources needed to build and run the set of instantiated virtual machines on a comparatively short-term basis, such as hours or days, for their intended application.
Typically, when a user utilizes a cloud, the user must track the software applications executed in the cloud and/or processes instantiated in the cloud. For example, the user must track the cloud processes to ensure that the correct cloud processes have been instantiated, that the cloud processes are functioning properly and/or efficiently, that the cloud is providing sufficient resources to the cloud processes, and so forth. Due in part to the user's requirements and overall usage of the cloud, the user may have many applications and/or processes instantiated in a cloud at any given instant, and the user's deployment of virtual machines, software, and other resources can change dynamically over time. In cases, the user may also utilize multiple independent host clouds to support the user's cloud deployment. That user may further instantiate and use multiple applications or other software or services inside or across multiple of those cloud boundaries, and those resources may be used or consumed by multiple or differing end-user groups in those different cloud networks.
In terms of the management of a set of virtual machines operated by a user in a cloud, each machine in a set of virtual machines can have an associated set of installed applications and other resources managed by the cloud management system of the host cloud or clouds. In cases, the user or operator of the virtual machines may wish to migrate or move those virtual machines to another cloud host. To perform that task, the user will need to interrogate the virtual machines to acquire their associated set of applications, the execution state of those applications, data associated with those applications, and/or other configuration data. In existing cloud management systems, the extraction of those reports and data is not configured to be automatically performed, and typically requires software, applications, logic, or tools that execute on top of the cloud-based operating system to set up the capture of those virtual machine images and eventually, to initiate the migration of those machines to other potential hosts.
It may be desirable to provide systems and methods for introspective application reporting to facilitate virtual machine movement between cloud hosts, in which the self-reporting of virtual machines and/or their constituent applications and other configuration data can be automatically captured at the level of the kernel of the cloud-based operating system, where the kernel is likewise configured to initiate downstream migration of selected virtual machines and/or their application complements.